Vietnam tourism achieves impressive accomplishments in 2019

Vietnamese tourism performed well in 2019 with outstanding results.

Trang An in Ninh Binh Province

Vietnam won four awards at World Travel Awards 2019 in late September. It won Top Destination in Asia 2019, Top Gastronomic Destinations in Asia 2019, and Top Cultural Destination in Asia 2019, and Hoi An won the title of Asia’s Leading Cultural City Destination 2019.

It also received dozens of nominations for transportation, accommodation and cuisine at the awards, including nominations in major categories including World's Leading Cultural Destination 2019, World's Leading Destination 2019, World's Leading Tourist Board 2019, World's Leading City Destination 2019, World's Leading Culinary Destination 2019, and World's Leading Cultural City Destination 2019.

Ha Long Bay and Danang were nominated as top global destinations. Vietnam Airlines had seven nominations and Vietravel had two nominations. Various hotels and resorts in Vietnam received 23 nominations such as the JW Marriot, Intercontinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort, and Anantara Quy Nhon.

In January, Vietnam won 15 ASEAN tourism awards at a ceremony held as part of the ASEAN Tourism Forum. Such achievements are the recognition of efforts and strong development of Vietnam's tourism industry.

Vietnam received over 1.5 million international tourists in January 2019 alone. Since July to November, the number of international tourists continued rising reaching record numbers of 1.62 million tourists and 1.8 million tourists in October and November respectively. According to the General Statistics Office of Vietnam, Vietnam received over 18 million international tourists in 2019, meeting the set goal to receive 17.5-18 million tourists.

These achievements were also motivations for the tourism industry to improve. There are still many problems that Vietnam must address and have been raised by many experts to encourage tourists to return to Vietnam and ensure the sustainable development of the sector. Some of the most talked-about issues were visa procedures and exemptions, overcharging, overcrowding at many locations and service quality.